At the Third Arab Bloggers meeting: “Welcome to Free Tunisia”

“Welcome to free Tunisia”: This is how Tunisian activist Sami Ben Gharbia introduced the 3rd Arab Bloggers meeting that is taking place in Tunis. Being here, in the first Arab country that has toppled its own regime, is quite meaningful for everyone attending in this year of the Revolutions. Participants from 15 Arab countries, together with others from countries like the US, Trinidad and Tobago and Ghana, are sharing insights and experiences on issues that go from net neutrality and net freedom to coverage and monitoring of the upcoming elections in some of the countries of the region. We are all missing the Palestinian participants, who could not make it because of VISA concerns. Apparently the Tunisian government denied them access to the country, which has deprived us, once again, of the voices of these very crucial actors in the Middle East and North Africa region. We have issueda statement expressing our concerns about this to the Tunisian government. These are the tweets that started it:

I´ll post more on the contents of the conferences and workshops soon. Meanwhile, here´s an Aljazeera piece covering the first sessions: Bloggers say Arab Spring has gone global. And follow us on the #AB11 hashtag on Twitter.